South Australian Artist, Writer, Video Producer and Animator, David Arandle working under the pseudonym 'The Extraordinary Tourist' or 'TET' for short Blogs about his personal animation projects as well as Tips, Software Reviews, Featured Animators Animation Business and a whole lot more.

Part 3: Evolution of a GoAnimate Contest Entry

Contests are always difficult because you want to do something that really captures people's imagination or at least gets their attention. So, when you don't feel you've achieved that, it can be a little disappointing.

You can view my completed animation below noting that all the voices are mine. My natural speaking voice for my character and a digitally altered, lower pitch and faster tempo version of my voice for Kevin.

Once you've watched the animation you'll see there's nothing particularly ground breaking. It's a straight up conversation with a couple of cut scenes to illustrate specific points being made by the characters.

You may also notice, if you've watched the video of me performing the very first draft of the script, that the final version is considerably shorter and missing quite a few lines. This was a result of some seriously harsh editing.

Originally I animated the full script with pretty much everything included from the first draft of the script. However the more I watched it the more I realized it was just unnecessarily long, not that funny. I also wasn't able to come up with any cut away scenes that could add in the humor that was missing. So I chopped out more than a minute of dialogue.

What you're left with is what I consider to be the funniest part of the script I wrote, though I'm not entirely sure if it's all that funny anymore. It can get that way when you've seen a joke over and over. You just have to trust it will be funny for people the first time they see it like it was for you when you originally thought of the idea.

I'm also not that happy with the voice I came up with for Kevin. Digitally altering a voice rarely results in something that sounds anything other than digitally altered to me. You kind of end up with a TTS voice that is able to be expressive but still doesn't quite sound natural.

There's not too much else to say about my entry. I don't think it's bad by any means. I just don't think it has the spark to really stand out from the pack. Though I never know with my audience. I've seen other top level GoAnimators produce work of similar standard that really connects with their fans. I may be pleasantly surprised.

2 comments:

I know what you mean, about digitally altering the voice. I am pretty good with male voices so I normally don't do any altering. However, I just wasn't happy with some of the male or female voices I came up with for my "A Prince of Persia" so I did alter the female voices and the main male character. I refer not to and except for the occasional female voice, I don't think I will in the future, like you said "Just doesn't sound real.

By the way, I found your entry funny and entertaining. Maybe I wouldn't after viewing it a ton of times during production. I am however going to watch it again now, having finished your blogs on it.

I'm glad you enjoyed my entry. It's not really one to watch over and over again I think. It's pretty straight forward. You've pretty much got everything from it you're going to get after two or three watches.

TET's Main Blog

I also write articles about a whole range of things that interest me. If you want to see what's caught my attention beyond animation and video head over to my main home and blog at www.extraordinarytourist.com

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